The Importance of Early Identification and Treatment of Childhood Onset Bipolar Disorder: Creating Specialty Care

Childhood onset bipolar disorder as it is currently treated in the United Stated carries a poor prognosis in the short term based on prospective follow-up studies of clinical samples [1-4] and into adulthood based on retrospective studies in adults [5,6]. This is a problem of enormous proportions given the several percent incidence of the illness in adolescents in the US [7,8] and the findings that twothirds of all adult bipolar illness had it onset in childhood and adolescence (before age 19) and more than a quarter of the illness began in childhood (prior to age 13) [5,9]. Those with childhood onset do much more poorly than those with adult onsets.